Monday, October 28, 2013

Last Christmas I bought my mom a set of four square plates with my designs...one for each of the four seasons. I really liked how they came out, except that the design for the bird plate was smaller than it looked in the preview, and was a little off-center. I probably could have gotten that replaced (CafePress is usually good about that)...but I just didn't take the time to do it.

After nearly a year of use, the plates seemed to have fared well. They do show some signs of use though. The bird plate was scratched when a steak knife was used on it...as you can see below. So, it's probably best to not use sharp knives on these.

My plates are currently on sale in the CafePress marketplace, and you can get an extra 20% off today with coupon code BOO29. (Coupon expires at midnight Oct 29).

As far as quality and customer service, they're great. As far as my experience as an artist selling through their service...not as good. I prefer Zazzle, who has done a lot to improve seller experience over the 5+ years I've worked with them, while CafePress has sort of yanked it's artists around, changing their price structure in ways that were bad for artists, separating the marketplace from the shopkeepers own shops and then ignoring shop maintenance, stuff like that. I still sell through them because of some products like the plates which I really like that aren't offered elsewhere, and because it would be a pain and not really worth it to yank my products from them...but I like Zazzle better and am putting most of my focus there now. I share about all the places I've sold through here if you're interested in learning more: http://www.squidoo.com/podshops

Thanks for posting this review. I had never thought of these being used as dinner plates since CafePress calls them cocktail plates. Your images are lovely. Good to know about the scratching, but it makes sense since it is a printed image on ceramics and not a glazed ceramic image. The photos are lovely, great for showing what they really look like.

They are small for dinner plates, but my mom usually ate small meals so they were perfect for her. They would also make good "catch all" trays for coins and such. I should add a picture that shows them with change or something on them to show scale.

PS: It doesn't really look like a glaze with printing on top...the printing looks like it's under the glaze (whether it is or not I'm not sure but that's what it looks like). But anyways, my mom must have been using a really sharp knife on it because the scratches actually went into the glaze. You can feel them, not just see them.